GoDaddy Full Review: Pros and Cons in Details
GoDaddy: A Variety of Options
Pros
Cons
Quick Stats
GoDaddy is a popular domain registrar that offers very low prices for domain registration, but is it the one for you? In this review, we will cover all the aspects that make GoDaddy a go-to option for domain registration.
Plans and Pricing
GoDaddy domain registrar has a wide range of affordable plans and bundles. You also have the option to add or remove extra features depending on your budget and needs.
Starting price
For $11.99, you can get your domain name registered and ready to go!
Keep in mind, prices vary based on how popular your domain name is. You might have to make an offer for a domain name with only two or three syllables. GoDaddy domain registrar offers a broker service that negotiates with the original domain owner to get you a lower price for taken domain names.
| Top-Level Domain | Regular Price | Renewal Price |
|---|---|---|
| .com | $11.99/year | $18.99/year |
| .net | $14.99/year | $18.99/year |
| .org | $9.99/year | $20.99/year |
| .co | $11.99/year | $34.99/year |
Renewal price
The renewal price is slightly higher than the starting price. Here as well, price varies depending on the top-level domain (TLD) used. The renewal price for .com domains with GoDaddy remains somewhat affordable at $18.99 per year.
Grace period
In domain registration, timely renewal is crucial. If you fail to renew your domain name, it will expire. Others can buy your expired domain and ask for a greater price if you wish to reclaim it. And this is where a grace period comes into play. A period during which your domain name is retained for a set duration if you fail to renew on time. GoDaddy domain registrar offers a grace period of 12 days. After the period is over, you will have to pay a redemption fee of $80 to retrieve your domain name, and after 26 days, your domain name goes to auction and can be purchased by anyone else. it's worthy noting that it's somewhat shorter than other domain registrars.
Discounts on domain bulk purchases
GoDaddy provides reduced prices for users wishing to buy multiple domain names at once. To obtain that discount, you would have to contact their customer support for a tailored discount on your bulk purchase.
Promotions
In addition to the rates listed above, you may save even more money by taking advantage of the promos and offers available on their deals page.
Privacy and Protection
GoDaddy domain registrar offers a variety of security and protection levels for your domain name. So you can pick and choose the security plan that suits you. We do recommend getting WHOIS privacy protection.
Basic privacy and protection
Your personal information will be partially concealed from the WHOIS database by default with GoDaddy domain registrar at no extra charges. Along with domain protection from unwanted spam.
Full domain privacy and protection
For $9.99 per year, you can get a higher protection level that conceals all your personal information from the WHOIS database. As well as protecting your domain from accidental expiration, malicious transfers, domain hijackers and third-party access to data.
Ultimate domain protection
An upgrade to the ultimate protection plan for $14.99 monthly avails added protection from malware scans and monitoring of google blacklisting to make sure your website is visible in google search results.
Domain lock
Making sure that your domain is not transferred to any other registrar is an essential feature that GoDaddy provides, which further enhances the security and privacy of your data.
Auto-renewal
GoDaddy makes sure to keep your domain name from expiring by activating auto-renewal for all your domains. You can opt-out of auto-renewal.
Domain Transfer
Transferring to GoDaddy
Transferring your domain name to GoDaddy domain registrar is quite simple. To begin, determine whether your domain can be transferred by looking it up in the domain database. You would have to unlock your domain and obtain an authorization code from your previous registrar. After paying a one-time fee of $7.99 to transfer your domain, in 5-7 days your domain's registrar transfer would be all complete.
Transferring from GoDaddy
To transfer your domain to a different registrar, you must first unlock it on GoDaddy, which is done for free, and then transfer it to the domain you want.
User Experience
Godaddy's website is easy to navigate, with top buttons that take you anywhere you want. In case you couldn't find what you need, you can always reach out to their customer support team.
Customer support
After trying their customer support, we must admit that they have a very reliable customer support system. Available on both chat and phone. The chat function takes about a minute to connect you to a live agent, and 1-2 minutes for a response. The responses were pretty helpful and personalized.
Help pages
With an informative and easy-to-navigate help center, you can find an answer to almost any question you may have. The articles are categorized according to the topic covered. Below the article itself, you will find inputs from regular GoDaddy domain registrar customers, which could provide really helpful insights at times.
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Free Apps and Add-on services
After you create your GoDaddy account and even before adding your credit card information, you will have access to multiple services that would help bloggers and small business owners as well!
Multilingual website builder
If you want your website to go international but you do not have access to a professional translating service, this function is for you. It comes with ready website templates that are already in international languages.
All you need to do is a bit of tweaking here and there to make sure that the functions match your website's purpose. All for free and without adding a credit card.
Digital marketing suite
With this service, you will easily be able to manage marketing on different social media platforms from one place. Plus, you will be able to stay connected to your clients by viewing their reviews on multiple platforms as well.
E-store
A very helpful feat for online shop owners, especially those selling on multiple online stores at once (amazon, e-bay, Facebook market, etc.). It allows controlling inventories for all different stores from one place.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
GoDaddy provides this tool for search engine optimization for $6.99 per month. It helps boost your website ranking in search engine results by suggesting keywords, monitoring your website’s ranking, and adding your website to google business to give people an idea about what your website does and your services.
The Final Verdict
GoDaddy domain registrar is a go-to option for businesses and individuals looking for affordable domains and a basic protection layer. You can always increase privacy and protection by upgrading your plan. It provides an easy way to update multiple domains at once. It also has a negotiation service via a broker if you want to bid on a taken domain name. Even after paying the broker fee, you will still be saving on expensive and highly wanted domain names.
However, you do need to pay attention to extra fees by opting out of any unwanted extra services at checkout. We also recommend taking into consideration that you may have to pay extra for WHOIS privacy protection on your domain name.
FAQs
Yes, they might even ask you to upgrade your plan if you get too much traffic.
You can easily migrate your website by uploading the files on GoDaddy’s control center, or by using an FTP client. You can also migrate your WordPress site by filling an online form.
GoDaddy offers customer service in 27 languages, some of them are; English, German, French, Spanish, Turkish and Chinese.
Yes, there's a 30-day money-back guarantee.
You can pay for your plan either using PayPal or different credit cards. So it doesn't matter if it's Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Union Pay, and Discover.
The starting price of a .com domain on GoDaddy starts at $11.99 per year.
Yes, there’s a slight increase in price, for example, .com top-level domains would cost $11.99 per year at registration and they would cost $18.99 per year at renewal.
Yes, it costs $7.99 to transfer your domain name to GoDaddy.
Yes. It is. It’s registered with the ICANN, which validates and gives the license to domain registrars so they can register domains legally.
You can contact GoDaddy’s customer support through live chat or by phone.
No, your domain is locked with GoDaddy, which means that your domain name cannot be transferred to any other registrar without your permission.